The touch screen, the keyboard, the hotness, the open source. My long wait for a hot phone may be nearly over. CrunchGear is reporting that the video below of the alleged HTC Dream running Android may be the actual phone after all. So much for the haters.

Wired is reporting that according to an unofficial T-Mobile blog:

“…the first version of the multimedia Google Phone will be released by HTC starting on September 17 for one week, for T-Mobile customers only. This offer will be immediately followed by a general release a week later. It will be called, ostensibly, the G1.”

T-Mobile offering a special early release to their current customers, with or without discount, would play perfectly into their customer base who tend to be faithful and loyal to the cellular provider.

While some may be wary of being an early adopter for a brand new mobile interface, I for one look at the potential of being able to work with something that isn’t locked down and closed source as the iPhone is. At least I won’t have to modify firmware to make it work.

Regardless as how it plays out, I am saving my lunch money in anticipation for the Android phone. Now I can stop scouring the market for an old beat up, overpriced iPhone to jailbreak & unlock while I wait for T-Mobile to release something better than their current Sidekick 2008 dud.

We got into a little freelancing groove at LinuxWorld this year. Rikki Kite, Managing Editor, asked for a little help with video tech for interviews. TechMonkey (from Alternageek) and I lent a hand and they got some great clips. Linux Pro Editor in Chief, Joe Casad, sat down with the community managers from Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE for a year in review and what they have planned. Check out their video at LinuxPro.

I met James Nixon actually hanging out at the empty Debian booth at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. I asked him if he would talk on camera for Alternageek about why he loved PC-BSD. The video has explatives and is not for children or those easily offended but I just couldn’t cut it up or bleep them out for the tech show because it would take away from his enthusiasm for the project. So, since I am a total fangirl, I decided to upload it to my own YouTube account and post it here. I love his passion for his favorite distro.

If you want to try PC-BSD or FreeBSD you can grab them here:

• PC-BSD
• FreeBSD

I have been anxiously awaiting the latest OpenMoko phone and have been excited about it’s ongoing development. If you are unfamiliar with OpenMoko, it is a company developing open source hardware & software for mobile phones. Around before the Google Android project, it has been striving to get it’s product out as a stable release. The first shipments to North America went out just a short time ago and the device has been selling out from the direct store. Just think, an open source phone that you can take with you to other cellular providers and you are *allowed* to do what you want with. In fact, you are *encouraged*.

An OpenMoko distrubutor, Koolu, is offering a free phone for Google Apps referrals. Basically I can earn my own free OpenMoko FreeRunner by referring 25 people to register for the Premier Edition of Google Apps (pay for service) or 100 people to sign up for FREE Google Apps through the Koolu web site. The sign up process for Google Apps only takes 3 minutes and requires no purchase, registration or verifying of a domain (web site).

In other words, you don’t have to buy anything or even own a domain name to help me earn one of these delicious phones.

Just use this link to sign up and help me earn a free open phone:

http://apps.koolu.com/google-apps-referral/google-apps-signup.php?r=1000277

or the TinyURL if you would rather: http://tinyurl.com/openmoko

Please pass this link on. I will post the progress here.

I disliked Ubuntu Gutsy when it was released and I have to say I dislike Hardy as well.

When I recently rebuilt my main machine, I installed Hardy hoping to give Ubuntu another chance. I used to be a huge Ubuntu fan unfortunately, the fandom stops with Feisty.

Bonus to Hardy, that annoying tracker does not install and hog my system by default. The most annoying thing? Lots of support for lots of hardware was dropped. Winfast & Hauppauge TV Tuner cards which have worked wonderfully in linux have all kinds of special issues in Ubuntu starting with Gutsy. MythBuntu equals a big pain in the neck.

I have heard from others who are leaving Ubuntu since the last few releases. Reading through the support forums and the bugtrackers, the community has reverted to the old standard of either not replying, treating people like they aren’t worth the effort to explain things to, or assuming their position on the issue is superior. This is why linux users have always been avoided, because they act like elitist.

Ubuntu is supposed to be user friendly and for new linux users. How can you possibly promote that if the community snubs the newbies.

One thread that struck me was about the fact that there was no GUI disk management installed by default.  The very first response to this posting was “no one should need to manually manage disks…” WTF? Seriously?

There are several cases when you need to manually manage disks: 1) the LiveCD does not mount local disks, 2) If you add a new disk to the system. How many people who aren’t major geeks know how to manage their disks from the command line? I know several people I consider pretty geeky who don’t even know how to do it in Windows.

There are apps you can apt-get to enable a GUI access like gparted, but you have to know what it is called & how to install it ~or~ the right search terms to google to learn how. How many newbies are going to know how to do this or not reach maximum level of frustration with this? Ubuntu doesn’t have a utility that kicks off on boot if you have added new hardware either.

Ubuntu is really losing it’s way, and I have to say I cannot recommend it anymore. I am back to vanillla Debian and maybe dabble some more in Arch. Do you have a particular distro you absolutely adore? Let me know what you are using and why you love it and I will give it a whirl.

This week Reddit released their backend code for download and as open source. Being open source anyone can download and improve upon the Reddit code. This is a win for people who want to be Reddit clones, as well as a win for Reddit who gets the benefits of features, bug fixes, and more from anyone who contributes. 

If you are interested in the project or want to grab the code, head over to the Reddit Trac Open Source Project.